Going into the archives of a newspaper is the closest one will ever come to time travel.

It is not merely that history is written in the present-tense, but the writing also reflects the sensibilities and mores of the times of the journalists.

Now, nearly every single page of the Asbury Park Press in its original format — news articles, birth and wedding announcements, obituaries, advertisements and classified ads — from 1905 to the present is available online at app.newspapers.com.

"The Press is doing a great public service to put all these online — even for a fee," said Timothy G. Hart, director of the Ocean County Cultural & Heritage Commission. "These papers are a window into the history of the times — not a dry textbook — but as close to the moment as possible with the possible exception of a journal or diary. Especially in the past, the current separation between editorial and news was not established to our standards. The opinions of the editors and news writers are often not very hard to discern."

In the old editions of the Press, local and international dispatches sit side-by-side on the pages. They are a record not only of what life in America was like at any given moment over the newspaper’s 137-year history, but from the unique perspective of what life was like as a resident of the Jersey Shore.

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The Hindenburg disaster is arguably the most historic event to happen in our backyard. This was the front page of the Asbury Park Press on May 7, 1937.(Photo: Asbury Park Press archives)

On Dec. 8, 1941, a day after the United States was attacked by Japan, the then-Asbury Park Evening Press published the text of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “a day that will live in infamy” address to Congress on its front page.

The digital archives, though, shows how the people who lived here at the time reacted to that crisis — for some of you, your grandparents and great-grandparents — unaware of what would become of them, their family, their friends and neighbors, and indeed the nation over the next four years.

“City Ordered On War Basis” is the headline in an article that sits on A1 next to Roosevelt’s speech. The city is Asbury Park.

“…Mayor Clarence V. Mooney was to place police and fire departments on full-time operation thru the cancellation of vacation, leaves of absence and days off," the piece read. "At the same time, council ordered the placing of 24-hour guards on the city water plant, sewage disposal plant and fire alarm system and directed heads of the fire and police forces to survey immediately their needs for defense.”

The Press archives are a kind of virtual local museum, one that is available to anyone with an Internet connection. You can search through 111 years of the Press by specific date or keyword, even by a particular name. You can zoom in on a specific article or ad, "clip" it for your own files, email it, or share it on social media.

While this trove will be of great value to those who wish to research local history, there are a multitude of options for searching family histories. You can find announcements for engagements, weddings and births, as well as obituaries and death notices. It's also a lot of fun to browse through the old ads and classified listings, or see what the big story was on the front page of your birthday.

Hart said that the commission dove into the archives of 19th century-era local newspapers to research how the Civil War impacted Ocean County for local commemoration ceremonies marking the 150th anniversary of the conflict. Recently, county historians and librarians digitized more than 90 years of the Tuckerton Beacon and the New Jersey Courier, two old weekly papers, which are now available to the public at the Ocean County Library.

"To be a little philosophical, in George Orwell’s book '1984,' the present is manipulated by destroying the records of the past," Hart said. "I believe that making the past through newspapers accessible to as many as possible is a great civic service."

This joint effort between the Gannett company, the owner of the Asbury Park Press, and newspaper.com offers various pricing options for full access: $7.95 a month or $59.95 a year. You can also look at hundreds of papers across the nation for $139.90 a year.